By Siobhan Fenton
RELATIVES whose loved ones were killed in the Enniskillen Remembrance Sunday bombing have vowed to keep their memories alive and continue fighting for justice on the 30th anniversary.
The IRA bomb, hidden in a nearby hall, exploded without warning as many townsfolk paid their respects to fallen soldiers at the County Fermanagh town’s cenotaph at 10.45am on November 8, 1987.
Eleven people died – 10 were civilians and another a police officer – in the immediate aftermath. The terror group had targeted soldiers on parade.
Ronnie Hill, 68, a former principal of the town’s high school, died in December 2000 after 13 years in a coma. due to injuries sustained in the attack.
The Poppy Day bomb ripped through the Co Fermanagh town while locals were attending a ceremony at the war memorial.
The device was planted in a building close to the memorial and when it detonated the walls collapsed on top of those who had gathered to pay respects to the war dead.
The actions of the bombers stood in stark contrast to the response of bereaved father Gordon Wilson.
He spoke movingly about his daughter Marie, 19, in a statement that took many by surprise at the time because it contained words of forgiveness for those who killed the student nurse.
He told how Marie held his hand tightly, and gripped him as “hard as she could”, adding with her last words, “Daddy, I love you very much”.
Mr Wilson added: “But I bear no ill will. I bear no grudge.
“Dirty sort of talk is not going to bring her back to life. She was a great wee lassie,”
He added: “I will pray for these men [who committed the attack] tonight and every night.”
Mr Wilson, a draper, later set up a trust aimed at helping young people reconcile their differences in Northern Ireland. He died in 1995.
His words were in stark contrast to the outrage expressed by leading politicians, including then prime minister Margaret Thatcher who described the attack as “utterly barbaric”, adding: “It’s really desecrating the dead and a blot on mankind.”
Archbishop Robin Eames, then head of the Church of Ireland, who was in Enniskillen, added that he “wished the bombers could have seen what I have seen”.
The day after the attack, loyalist paramilitaries sought to retaliate by shooting a Catholic in west Belfast. Due to mistaken identity, they killed a Protestant student, Adam Lambert.
No one has ever been held to account for the Enniskillen bombing.
Yesterday, Joan Anderson, whose parents William and Agnes Mullan were killed in the attack, said: “You have to learn to live with it or else you’re another victim and I refuse to be another victim.
“You heal to a point but it’s inside you and it never leaves. Every day of my life I miss my parents.
“I can say that, after 30 years, you finally get to the point where you can accept that it happened but you do not forget and I am still angry about it.
“I’m angry that right across Northern Ireland, good people have been killed and we have been forgotten about.”
Stella Robinson, whose mother and father Wesley and Bertha Armstrong died, criticised the lack of education about the Troubles among those born after the 1996 IRA ceasefire, despite the advent of social media and widespread use of the internet making information more widely available than was the case at the time.
It took until 1997 for Gerry Adams to apologise on behalf of the IRA for the Enniskillen tragedy.
Mrs Robinson added: “I think they just want people to move on and they don’t want to be reminded.”
She said of her mother: “She was like my friend, I could tell her anything and I really miss that. She loved baking and she loved farm animals. I was very close to both my parents and they meant the world to me. We spent Sundays together going for walks and for drives.”
She said she feels robbed by not spending the past 30 years with them, adding: “They were just going to church for Remembrance Sunday and they were killed – murdered.”
Victims’ families, local representatives, politicians and other dignitaries are due to attend a memorial unveiling today at the site and at the local presbyterian church.
Ms Robinson’s granddaughter will be singing, a talent she has inherited from her great-grandfather who she never got to meet.
Ms Robinson says proudly: “She has a beautiful voice, like my father did. That will be emotional. It will be like hearing him again.”
REMEMBERING ENNISKILLEN 30 YEARS ON:
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